Date of Award
5-1-2025
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Mass Communication and Media Arts
First Advisor
Berry, Karla
Abstract
The short film “Smile! Like you Mean It.” is a depiction of mentality and reality. The weaving of a pediatrics journey through medications and diagnosis, alongside an adult reflection on their past going through the same thing, brings to light the odd similarities between past and future. There is an intense and intriguing play with standard documentary, experimental, and essay film as they blend into one cohesive short story. The movie is filled with abstraction to ground the hard topics of the dialogue. The film plays out almost as fragments of two-story lines, a single day for my nephew Oliver, as he goes to his first therapy appointment, and an in- depth conversation I have with my friend Cole about my past. The film plays out like a love story to pediatrics who are struggling with medication and intense mental illness diagnoses. This movie seeks to inform and to emotionally engage an audience on a true story as it plays out across a sea of repetition, progression and abstraction.
Access
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